Re: "I'm not a Wiccan, but..."
I started off Wiccan, as many did, simply because it's so well known. It's also, I think, the branch of pagansim that has the most draw to young adults, which is when I went searching for a new religion and there were many classmates around me who claimed to be Wiccan. My personal thoughts on the matter is that Wicca is actually pretty dogmatic. Everything I've read on it is very "definite" in what it claims. There is a god and a goddess (nothing I've read even mentions that this might not be literal), there are certain directions associated with certain things, you must use these tools, you must use these colors, so on and so forth... Not that this is a bad thing, necessarily, but I think it causes two things:
1) As much as people searching for a new religion want to break away from the things they don't like about their old religion, it is still much easier to transition to a new religion when you can learn the hard and fast "rules" about what you are supposed to be believe.
2) Many people who are truly attracted to pagansim and not just trying to be "different," tend to have a mindset more along the lines of being open-minded to everyone having their own path.
I think this leads Wicca into attracting easy converts initially, but once people start to really develop their spiritual pagan beliefs, they drift away from the rigidity of it. I personally, eventually realized that it felt silly to reject my Christian background because of its set-in-stone dogma, but then switch to a religion that is just as dogmatic.
Add to all this the idea that, as others have said, many people who are drawn to Wicca never get past "Wicca 101," so it becomes increasingly difficult and annoying to find Wiccans who aren't just wearing the religion as a fashion statement to be "different" and making it seem like a joke. And then there are the ones who swear up and down that they are really devoted and cast off the "fluff-bunnies," but the very fact that they have a list of what makes someone a true Wiccan vs. a fluff-bunny just seems to automatically make them not serious either because they're missing the point... -_-
Even the people who do actually follow Wicca to a T are probably wary of putting themselves into the middle of that drama.
I started off Wiccan, as many did, simply because it's so well known. It's also, I think, the branch of pagansim that has the most draw to young adults, which is when I went searching for a new religion and there were many classmates around me who claimed to be Wiccan. My personal thoughts on the matter is that Wicca is actually pretty dogmatic. Everything I've read on it is very "definite" in what it claims. There is a god and a goddess (nothing I've read even mentions that this might not be literal), there are certain directions associated with certain things, you must use these tools, you must use these colors, so on and so forth... Not that this is a bad thing, necessarily, but I think it causes two things:
1) As much as people searching for a new religion want to break away from the things they don't like about their old religion, it is still much easier to transition to a new religion when you can learn the hard and fast "rules" about what you are supposed to be believe.
2) Many people who are truly attracted to pagansim and not just trying to be "different," tend to have a mindset more along the lines of being open-minded to everyone having their own path.
I think this leads Wicca into attracting easy converts initially, but once people start to really develop their spiritual pagan beliefs, they drift away from the rigidity of it. I personally, eventually realized that it felt silly to reject my Christian background because of its set-in-stone dogma, but then switch to a religion that is just as dogmatic.
Add to all this the idea that, as others have said, many people who are drawn to Wicca never get past "Wicca 101," so it becomes increasingly difficult and annoying to find Wiccans who aren't just wearing the religion as a fashion statement to be "different" and making it seem like a joke. And then there are the ones who swear up and down that they are really devoted and cast off the "fluff-bunnies," but the very fact that they have a list of what makes someone a true Wiccan vs. a fluff-bunny just seems to automatically make them not serious either because they're missing the point... -_-
Even the people who do actually follow Wicca to a T are probably wary of putting themselves into the middle of that drama.
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